The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul

Freedom Formula #1 is another one of those post-apocalyptic future stories where weapons of war have become entertainment for the upper classes while the lower classes spend their days struggling to survive. It’s Roller Ball with exo suits. In this story, mobile exo-suits that were designed for warfare have been converted to suits for racing. It’s Japanese mecha meets Nascar. Or at least Neon Genesis Evangelion meets The Running Man. There’s almost no shortage of these type of comparisons that you could make.

The racers themselves remain hidden and nameless. It’s the suits they wear and the sport they play that’s important about them. They’re corporate sponsored and everyone loves them. Once used in war, they are now paraded around as a symbol of freedom. Zee is on the complete other side of the social scale from the racers. He’s one of the lower class and actually has to work. He has to fulfill a commitment of his dead father and make a courier delivery to the city and to a mysterious figure named “The Rev.” His path to the city throws him into the middle of a race and into an accident with one of the races mobile pit crew.

Freedom Formula may just be manga for the manga-hater. The story by Edmund Shern and art by Kai and Chester Ocampo lie in some weird nether-world between American and Japanese comics. The concept is straight out of any number of manga titles and the artwork walks a fine line, producing some very mangaish robotic suits without totally succumbing to the style. In fact, the artwork looks like a cross between Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Tim Truman’s Scout or Grimjack. There’s a very open, American-landscape feel to this book that shows up during the race sequences.

The first issue is an interesting setup. Racing robots, mysterious packages and family obligations combine for a fast paced story that takes an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. There’s a lot of concepts and characters in this book that race along quickly. Shern does a nice job balancing all of them, never letting a plot point or a character get lost in a mess.

Freedom Formula #1
“Ghosts of the Wasteland”
Written by: Edmund Shern
Drawn by: Mai & Chester Ocampo
Lettered by: Stanley Ong